A Baby for the Doctor

Chapter 1

Kyli McCulley's phone rang for the third time in as many minutes. She gave her horse Bartlet one last scratch on the neck and nudged him out of the way. "Sorry, old boy. Three calls in a row is a distress signal."

She tossed the curry comb into the pail next to the stall and dug her phone out of her back pocket. It was her sister. "Bayley?"
"Oh thank god you answered."
Kyli could hear the newest baby, the one they called sweetness, screaming in the background. "What's up?"

"Sweetness has a double ear infection. And the principal at Kiera's school called. She punched a girl in last period and they won't let her on the bus. I have to pick her up right now."

Bayley sighed. " I just got a call from the county. They need someone to pick up a three-year-old boy at the hospital. I told them twice we couldn't do it. They just called again and said they're going to have to keep him at the office tonight if we can't take him."

"Where do i pick him up?" Already Kyli's mind was sifting through what she needed to do to make it happen. She didn't have time for this. Of she didn't. She could barely manage the horses' upkeep much less build her therapy practice. But there was a three-year-old boy in a hospital with no one.

She had a therapy session at five she could postpone. Opening the door to the tack room, she grabbed a toddler car seat from the storage closet, hauling out the door of the barn and into the big house where bayley and hoseok lived with their - at least for the moment - eight kids.

A shuffling pause and Bayley was back. "Sorry. He's in Mobile in the children's unit. The resource manager said he was hurt pretty bad but didn't give me any details. No Georgia, No Cheerios in your ears. Anyway I don't know what your gonna find when you get there."

Kyli rummaged through a stack of children's pajamas an pulled out trains in a size 3T and 2T in rocket ships. She shoved them in a spare diaper bag and grabbed a couple of diapers out of a basket labeled five. "So, basically it's Situation normal."

"Basically. Okay so i just pulled in at the school. I've gotta go. Thanks Kyli."

Even before her sister hung up the phone, Kyli was already zipping up the bag. She grabbed an apple on the way out the back door and tossed the diaper bag to the front seat of her old truck. The car seat, with its many hooks and straps, into the back seat.

She learned a lot of new skills since her and Bayley started fostering. Things like: the temperature a bottle needed to be and that all diapers weren't created equal. The little boys didn't care how shoes looked, only that they were "fast."

She'd learned that she never met a night terror she didn't hate. And kids who had been through what their kids have been through were rightly scared of the dark. She learned that parenting, especially foster parenting was exhausting, exhilarating  and humbling.

When Bayley and Hoseok got married and hoseok and his daughter moved into the big renovated plantation house, Bayley had moved to Hoseok's cabin on the other side of Red Hill farm. Which she and Bayley had inherited from their biological father. This setup actually worked better for her, since she was working to build her equine therapy practice, Horses, Hope and Healing. But still with eight kids, there was always a baby to feed, homework to help with and hair to be fixed.

Her phone buzzed again, a text from Bayley.

Forgot to tell you the caseworker is meeting you at the hospital with the paperwork. Baby's name is Levi Walker.

Yes a name was kind of important.

Jimin is on his way to. We were in his office when we got the call.